Thursday, January 19, 2006

The Scottish Raj

Of the 21 Ministers and Law Officers in the Scottish Parliament only Robert Brown, the Scottish Lib Dem MSP for Glasgow was not born in Scotland (Newcastle, if you're interested). He holds the lofty position of Deputy Minister for Education and Young People.

Compare that with the people who run England:

Tony Blair Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service. MP for Sedgefield. Born Edinburgh.

Lord Falconer Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and Lord Chancellor. Not elected. Born Edinburgh.Bridget Prentice Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs. MP for Lewisham East. Born Glasgow.

We'll be happy to have all these MPs back to their proper place at Holyrood together with all our oil income over the last 30 years and now the overtaxing cancelled: it would be nice too to have our natural marine boundary reinstated back to Berwick from Carnoustie, changed for God knows what reason by Westminster in 1999 and then you English should certainly get your own Parliament and devolve all powers to Scotland and Wales and, perhaps, the English regions.

The Scots should pay us back for 300 years of subsidies. The 30 years of oil (most of the more expensive gas is in English water) is dwarfed by the billions spent to keep the Scottish economy afloat.

When the Scottish Parliament was reconvened Scotland should have paif back the money that England spent to bail it out after the Darien expedition.

"Many Scots supported the Union because the Darien disaster, coupled with a series of bad harvests after 1695, had caused huge distress in Scotland. The Treaty of Union, which provided for free trade and navigation and payment of £398,000 (a sum known as ‘the Equivalent’) in compensation for the Darien losses and to support Scottish industries, seemed vital to the country’s economic survival. The last Scottish Parliament met on 25 March 1707 and was not to be re-established in Edinburgh until 1999, almost 300 years after the failure of Darien."

Forget English "EU Regions".Scotlands destiny is to be a bite sized slave state "region" of brussels but it isnt Englands!, stay oot of our affairs and go and crawl cap in hand to your Brussels masters.

Anonymous does not know his international law. "Natural marine boundary" indeed! The fishing boundary set in 1999 is correct. The marine boundary of two nations with contiguous coasts should be equidistant at all points from those coasts. That God is an Englishman is nowhere more clearly demonstrated than by the line this law cuts across the oilfields. Most of it was never "Scotland's oil" at all.

Those of us trying (at the time) to live as one nation could not be bothered to argue the petty point, any more than any modern intellect could be ****d to worry about prehistoric ethnic differences so trivial as to be invisible to anyone with a life or even just an honest job of work to keep them busy.

Now it's all gone too far. Not only does Scotland cost us far too much economically; not only are we sick of the Scots' endless racist whingeing; the blasted Union is forcing us to live under an ideology which the rest of the world spend the whole 20th Century demonstrating to be utterly useless at best, and evil at worst.

Its not too much of an exaggeration to say that Scotland's oil "subsidised England" (if I can say that withou tbeing perjorative) throughout much of Thatcher's reign, with fiscal surpluses (running at over 30% of Scotland's GDP) - when oil prices were almost excruciatingly high. Hell, it even saved the entire United Kingdom economy from completely sinking in 1975 when the IMF came in (Adam Smith would be turning in his grave) I always like to point out that the M25 and the Docklands Redevelopment are quite wonderful monuments to the largesse of the North Sea - and Scotland's wealth have provided to the citizenry of London and England more generally. I do not begrudge them it, however - just as long as they remember where it came from.

Finally a minor geographical point. The marine boundary is indeed correct, it places absolutely no oil-fields in "oil-poor" England's waters at all, considering most oil-fields in the UK sector lie to the NE of Aberdeen and off the NE coast of - yep you guessed it - SCOTLAND! It would certainly take a master-stroke in cartography to place them anywhere the coastline and waters belonging to England.

I certainly would like to see the £208bn back on independence (I know, I'm being conservative in my estimates :-), we could spend it on many things to the benefit of our people and our country.

GET UP YOURSELF YOU SCOTCH TOSSPOT!YOURE ALL YAP. YOURE TOO SISSY TO BECOME INDEPENDENT. TOO SISSY AND TOO GUTLESS. ENGLAND WILL GET A PARLIAMENT AND THEN WE'LL CHUCK YOU OUT YOU PARASITES.MEANWHILE, HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE LIVING WELL ONLY BECAUSE OF ENGLAND? YOU WANKERS CANT SURVIVE WITHOUT US. YOU'RE USELESS! HA! HA!